Customer Reviews

The Essential Punisher, Vol. 1

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The Punisher is one of those rare comic characters who managed to rise from being a minor villain to the heights of comics with multiple series, movies and even a TV show on the way. This book reprints his first 12 years of stories as he goes from being a Spider-Man villain in 1974 to heading up his own mini-series in 1986. Along the way he pops up in everything from the death of Gwen Stacey to Frank Miller's legendary run in Daredevil. Through it all he's remarkably consistent and you can see why he thrived while most other comic characters have been forgotten.

There are some oddities of course. For a while it seems the Punisher could not be shown killing people so he uses net guns and the wildly convenient 'mercy bullets' that knock people out without killing them. In one scene Spider Man is shot and knocked out. He comes to in a room filled with fallen mobsters and concludes they're probably OK too and leaves without checking them. But that's one of the problems of mixing noble heroes and grim anti-heroes like the Punisher.

But by the 80s standards were looser and the Punisher was free to cut loose with deadly force. The book ends with the five-issue miniseries by Steven Grant and Mike Zeck that established the Punisher as a solo star. It's a bloody crime story that still holds up today.

One interesting detour in the book is the Punisher's origin story from ablack and white magazine called Marvel Super Action. In the 70s Marvel launched a few of these more adult books to get around the restrictions of the comic code authority and appeal to an older audience. It's interesting to see the Punisher go from the bright and happy and bloodless world of Spider-Man to an R rated crime story with sex and violence and then back. It's also interesting that the Punisher's real name Frank Castle is not revealed until the 80s.

I had low expectations when I picked this up, I was worried that 12 years of stories by different creators would be a bit of a mess but I was pleasantly surprised. This is a good read and I recommend it.

I've never been a big Punisher fan, even when he was at the height of his popularity in the 90s. However, this collection of his first appearances is very entertaining and shows just how tough it was to nail down the character of Frank Castle as he began his career in the Marvel Universe. The various authors do a good job of explaining some discrepancies in character and actions as they go, and by the time the Punisher got his own ongoing series (which starts in Volume 2 of the Essentials series), he had a good baseline. This volume is highly recommended.

The Punisher is one of a handful of Marvel characters who has had quite a sordid history. The 25 comics collected in this Essential collection shows that, beginning with his first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #129 (written by Gerry Conway), and the vigilante is showed at his best in classic Frank Miller penned Daredevil issues #182-184, and the classic Grant/Zeck mini-series from the 80's. There's also a Captain America story, as well as his first encounters with Jigsaw and Hitman. It's a nice collection, but the only problem with the book is the same problem with all of Marvel's Essential books, and it entirely depends on the reader. The black and white format marrs the art in a few issues, and the paper quality is easy to accidently rip. Even though you get a lot for the price, your better off getting the collected Grant/Zeck mini-series (which catapaulted the Punisher to superstar status in the 80's) or picking up any of the recent Garth Ennis penned Punisher tales to get the most from the character.

I understand that in the first volume of a story you want to give a good introduction to the character but I didn't feel like we needed all the punisher's appearances during the 80s. Maybe have his first appearance and a couple of the Daredevil issues. During the middle of the book Theres a mini on The Punisher but the art was so bad that I didn't even want to read it. Theres also a section where The Punisher fights Spider Man and Doc Ock and the art is very bad there as well. The five issue Punisher Mini is probably the highlight of the book, but I want to see The Punisher in his own book instead of having him guest star in someone else's. It was a good introduction but you could actually skip it and go on to the real Punisher story if you wanted too.